Suffering – An Interesting Perspective

One of the most difficult topics Christians deal with is suffering; how can God be good and allow suffering?  Many times we find the answers lacking.  We rationalize human suffering using free will arguments, man’s sin, and acknowledging  that we live in a broken world, but a frequent question that comes up is why would God allow animal suffering when the animals don’t sin, don’t have free will, and have done nothing to cause their suffering?  Here is an example of such a question that was asked on Reddit and I’d like to share what I found to be a very eloquent answer.

 

“Why did God's original design for the world include millions of years of suffering and death through the brutal process of evolution by natural selection? Why did God call this original design "very good"? Note that you cannot say that the fall of man caused death and suffering, because death and suffering existed before the fall.”

 

The person giving the answer is Daniel Hedin, who goes by /u/EsquilaxHortensis on Reddit.  He is hired by businesses to use his falcons to scare off pests that eat crops, attack customers, and/or clog up airplane turbines.  I don’t know him; he doesn’t know me.  He gave me permission to publish this.

I'd like to share some thoughts on this. You can skip down a ways to a more direct answer, since first I want to ruminate a bit on the subjective experience of death.

First I want to establish my credentials. See, I hunt animals with birds of prey, both for sport and professionally. I kill a lot of things, and almost always with my bare hands. Doing it humanely is of paramount importance to me, so typically I aim for a knock to the head to stun, followed by decapitation, though different animals have better deaths with other techniques. And, sometimes, the death is just ugly no matter how I handle it. So, I know something about violent death from the dealing side.

From the receiving side, too; when I was about 15 I was riding an ATV in the desert and one way or another managed to flip it over such that it rolled back onto me. I was pinned beneath it, the wind knocked out of me and my lungs pressed so hard that I couldn't draw breath. The scalding-hot metal of the machinery was pressed into me; I have scars still on my left hand and leg from where I was branded. There were others with me, but a little too far away, and even had I been able to cry out, which was just physically impossible, they likely wouldn't have been able to hear me.

I was, myself, stunned. My mind felt as jammed up and immobile as my body. I was aware that I was in a great deal of pain, but wasn't really experiencing it. I was also aware that I could not survive long in that position and that unless something happened I would be dead soon. Moments like that aren't made for philosophy; I remembered that I'd thought about such a moment in the past and had certain things I wanted to think about when the time came. Those thoughts were not accessible. There was only the terrible, grinding, stupefying present. Thankfully, I couldn't really feel fear, either. I managed to whisper "God..." but I can't quite call it a prayer in the normal sense, as I wasn't capable of entering into a prayer-state. It was at most a pointer toward the things I wished I could think and say.

I remember the moment very clearly, yet somehow can't remember who came to get the vehicle off of me. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure it was one of the people who was out riding that day and not divine intervention. The point is that I know something about violent death on the receiving end, too.

And as an observer. I work with animals. They die sometimes despite my best efforts, and it's always heartbreaking. Some raptors are very intelligent in terms of relationships and planning and tactics. One thing I have learned, though, is that death just isn't real for them. One falcon that I hand-raised, who sees me as her parent and who used to snuggle in bed with me when she was very little, almost choked to death at one point. She had been in the process, very barely drawing breath for almost half an hour before I arrived and was able to help her. What I found was that her eyes were wide open in stark terror, her little frame shaking, pain and confusion in every line of her body. Thankfully I had a multi-tool and was able to pull the blockage out of her throat. Less than a minute later, she was eating again as though nothing had happened. To her, perhaps, nothing had. There was no recognition that she almost ended permanently, only some unpleasant stimuli that were no longer troubling her.

Between her experience and mine is where I find almost all of the prey I dispatch. They are pumped on adrenaline and/or in shock, stunned and almost entirely insensate. They'll escape if they can, instinctually, but for the most part I think that the experience can be described as stressful more than anything else. And that stress is over the moment I can end it. And when I do, all they lose is the moment. Not their past, not their future; they are not aware of these things. They have no concept of death or loss. Most animals with what we'd call a consciousness live in the moment, and most of their moments are good enough. Adding another year to a cat's life doesn't make their subjective experience happier, just longer. What does it matter to my cat if he lives another ten days or another ten years? A higher quantity of moments mostly like the ones he has already experienced? And if he dies poorly, has that devalued the life that he has lived? What is the value of the life that he has lived?

Indeed, what is the value, the point, of any experience? Taking an atheist view, all life is qualitatively the same as a breaking wave or a falling stone: particles behaving as they must in probabilistic patterns. We happen to be more complex than most, leading to such things as emergent consciousness, but other than our feelings, why is a duck trying to avoid a falcon any different from a plant growing toward the light? We attach a lot of importance to the subjective experience of pain, but all that is is a mechanism by which self-replicators avoid damage that might cause them to not spam their environments with self-replicas as well. Of course pain is unpleasant; that's the point! Pain is good for the replicator in most cases or it wouldn't happen. And in the case of death it's usually over quickly at least. Those cases where the intentions of the system go awry and lead to prolonged suffering are exceptions and should be regarded as such.

Now to actually respond to you

The larger question, of course, is whether or not this system of reality is worth it, given the "problem of pain". I have two responses to this. One is logically sound and satisfies intellectual objections, but feels rather unsatisfying on its own. The other satisfies the shortcomings of the first, for me at least.

So then,

The intellectual answer to the Problem of Evil

Well, this is very simple, actually. No one has ever shown there to be a "Logical Problem of Evil". The argument is usually framed like this:

P1.  If an omnipotent, loving God exists, needless suffering would not exist.

             P2.  Needless suffering exists.
               C.  Therefore, an omnipotent, loving God does not exist.

The problem, of course, is premise 2. Simply put, we cannot evaluate whether needless suffering exists. We do not know the underlying framework of our reality, the ultimate fate of our universe, the truth about an afterlife, or the consequences of our actions or experience.

Some will object that an "omnipotent" God could have done things completely differently, but this doesn't stand to reason. Even an omnipotent being does not act except in accordance with its own nature. If a deity decides, for one reason or another, that this is the best way of doing things, that our suffering will be worthwhile, who are we to object? We're talking here about a transhumanly intelligent entity with access to information and wisdom that we cannot begin to comprehend. The idea that we somehow know better and have room to criticize is absurd.

This answer sucks, though, because all it does is refute an argument and give the impression of some lofty, detached deity with inscrutable goals who does not deign to consider the suffering of those trapped in his nightmarish matrix. And that's not what the Christian God looks like at all.

My Christian response to the emotional problem of suffering

This deity cared enough about us to intervene. That alone speaks volumes, but the way that it went about doing so is what's truly amazing. This incomprehensibly vast, powerful entity decided to experience our reality as we do, as one of us, in the person of Jesus. Jesus, who knew hunger, who knew subjugation, who knew hard work with too little sleep, who knew the loss of loved ones, who knew the most painful, humiliating means of execution that all the Powers of the world could give. We cannot speak of a detached deity who does not care about our pain. He knows.

He came into a world where the idea of a "good man" looked something like Tony Stark, cold and selfish, where the standard mode of regarding the people in the next country over was as potential slaves, where unwanted infants were thrown into dung hills to die of exposure, where there was no concept of a charitable hospital, where those who wronged you were to be wronged in return, where it was normal and expected that the strong would do what they could and the weak would suffer what they must.

And he turned that whole world on its head. He taught that the rich should give what they had to the poor, that the hungry should be fed, the sick healed, and one's enemies -- not just one's neighbors -- should be loved even unto the point of self-sacrifice. That the infant matters as much as the parent, that the slave matters as much as the emperor. He suffered with us and taught us to ease each other's suffering. He calls us to fix the world and make all as it should be. And he says that what's coming is going to make all of our pain worthwhile.

Today, when people find the idea of murdering infants to be detestable, that's because of Jesus. When we have the idea that leaders should be humble, that's because of Jesus. When we have the idea that rich people are almost obligated to give to charity, that's because of Jesus. When we have the idea that forgiveness is healthy and not just an occasional political necessity, that's because of Jesus.

In Jesus we see revealed the face of the deity who ordered things as they are ordered. The only question is one of trust. When I look to him I find that I'm not just willing to base my life on a positive response, but ecstatic to. This is a chance worth taking, sister.

Alex Rosenberg Rejects Theism Because the Probability of Sapient Life is “vanishingly small”.

The debate between Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig was excellent, full of good information, full of interesting arguments, and full of surprises.  One surprise was that Sean Carroll chose Dr. Alex Rosenberg as one of his supporting speakers.  In February 2013, Craig debated Rosenberg at Purdue University and pummeled him.  You know you are going to have a bad day when you agree to a debate and then proclaim in that debate that debating is not a good venue to exchange ideas, as Rosenberg did. 

Rosenberg is a co-director of the Center for Philosophy of Biology at Duke University.  As a philosopher, one would think he could give logically sound reasons for why he does not believe in God.  Rosenberg claimed the purpose of his talk was to show “the incompatibility of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and theism.”  Obviously this has nothing to do with the debate topic of God & Cosmology (aka a red herring), but maybe Carroll wanted a philosopher to give a good argument against theism even if the argument has nothing to do with cosmology.  So how does Rosenberg claim that evolution is incompatible with theism? 

 

“An omniscient God would therefore know that…..the probability of the emergence of life was low, the probability of the emergence of vertebrate life was even lower, the probability of the emergence of mammalian life was minuscule, the probability of the emergence of sentient life was even smaller, and of sapient life was vanishingly small.  God would have known this.”

There you have it.  The probability of human life evolving is so extremely small that God could not possibly have been involved.  Regardless on one’s view on evolution, I don’t see how it follows logically that if the probability of sapient life forming naturally is “vanishingly small” that this means God was not involved.  It seems the extremely low probability would show outside help may be needed.  If human life evolving naturally is extremely improbable, yet not enough to show God was involved, what could God have done to show that he was involved in the creation of life?  Here’s what Rosenberg says,

“God could have created us by a means so fiendishly clever, that involved so many complications, that involved so many laws of nature, and boundary conditions working together that we, as smart as we are, will never be able to figure out what that process was.  We will never be smart enough to identify the laws that governed our evolution from the basic distribution of matter from the beginning of the universe.”

Then he later says,

“Biology is much harder than quantum mechanics.  Why is it harder than quantum mechanics?  Because for one thing it involves the operation of quantum principles, the operation of classical physical principles, the operation of chemical thermodynamic laws, on a conjuries of initial conditions so complicated, so fine, so different across various environments that we now know relatively less about life on our planet than we know about the cosmology of the universe.”

In other words, God could have used the laws of physics and the fine-tuning of the universe to show that he exists….and that is what he did.  By the end of his talk, all I could say was “Amen!”

Roger Penrose on entropy: How did he calculate that?

 

One of the fine-tuning arguments frequently used is the low entropy state of the universe at the Big Bang.  This was calculated by Roger Penrose to be 1:10¹⁰¹²³.  How does he do this?  He explains it in his book, The Emperor’s New Mind.  Here is the section of the book that discusses it.   Penrose uses the Bekenstein-Hawking formula for the entropy of a particle in a black hole to determine the entropy of a particle at the singularity of the Big Bang as if the entire universe were a giant black hole.  He calculates this to be 10⁴³.  There are estimated to be 10⁸⁰ particles in the observable universe. 

 

10⁸⁰ x 10⁴³ = 10¹²³ . 

Entropy is on a logarithmic scale, so that is how he arrives at 10¹⁰¹²³. 

V = total phase-space volume available

W = original phase-space volume

V/W = 10¹⁰¹²³

 

Therefore, the accuracy of the low entropy value was 1:10¹⁰¹²³.  Penrose says,

“This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full, in the ordinary denary notation: it would be `1' followed by 10<sup>123</sup> successive `0 's! Even if we were to write a `0' on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe-and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure-we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed. The precision needed to set the universe on its course is seen to be in no way inferior to all that extraordinary precision that we have already become accustomed to in the superb dynamical equations (Newton's, Maxwell's, Einstein's) which govern the behaviour of things from moment to moment.”

 

If there are more particles in the universe than 10⁸⁰ (like an infinite number), all the more extraordinary!!

Sean Carroll pointed out in his debate with William Lane Craig that this low entropy value was not a requirement for life to exist and, therefore, should not be considered finely tuned by a creator.  As I discussed here, Robin Collins addresses this in his paper claiming that without a low entropy at the Big Bang, we would not know that our universe had a beginning and some of our fundamental laws of physics would not have been discovered.

The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability

The recent debate with Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig on February 21, 2014 had a different format than most debates.  Craig and Carroll debated on a Friday night, but then each brought two other people with them to write companion paper’s to support/refute the various positions and give a talk the following morning.  Sean Carroll brought Tim Mauldin and Alex Rosenberg.  William Lane Craig brought Robin Collins and James Sinclair.  I haven’t had time to look at the debate in depth yet, but on the surface it was a great exchange with lots of scientific details.  Sean Carroll held his own quite well, and holding your own against WLC is almost a default victory.  Not all of the videos are posted yet.  I can say the talk Tim Mauldin gave was a snooze….a giant ‘we don’t know anything and don’t need God either’. 

William Lane Craig

Sean Carroll

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the arguments Craig uses that points to an intelligent creator is the fine-tuning for life.  Carroll claims we have no evidence to suggest the universe is fine-tuned for life.  An example he uses is Roger Penrose’s staggering calculation for the minimum entropy value at the Big Bang….1:10¹⁰¹²³.  You could put a zero on every particle in the observable universe with more to spare.  It’s an unfathomably small number!!!  Carroll claims that the entropy of the early universe did not need to be that low for life to form, so it is actually an argument against the fine-tuning by a creator.  Queue Robin Collins.

Robin Collins

Robin Collins is an expert in the fine-tuning of universe.  His talk is not out on video yet, but he has published his companion paper called “The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability”.  He calls it the Discoverability Thesis.

 

“Discoverability Thesis: This thesis is that the universe is non-accidentally structured in such a way as to be highly discoverable.”

 

 

In other words, not only is the universe fine-tuned for life, but it is also finely tuned to allow for intelligent agents to be able to understand it.  Many of the fundamental constants and early universe conditions are not necessary for life, but are necessary if we are to be able to learn about the universe and life.  Collins claims to have found at least a dozen examples of fine-tuning for discoverability.

The low entropy condition at the Big Bang is one of them.  Carroll is correct in saying that the entropy could be higher and still support life, but having a low entropy helps our discoverability in two ways:

1)     A low entropy allows us to see other galaxies and a larger universe.  Without a low entropy, we would only see our galaxy.  We wouldn’t know that the universe was expanding or that it had a beginning.

2)    Without a low entropy in the beginning, the universe would not have a uniform distribution.  We wouldn’t be able to discover some of the fundamental laws that govern the universe, like General Relativity which assumes a uniform distribution throughout the universe.

The beginning of the universe points to a transcendent cause.  A universe that follows laws and can be rationally understood indicates a rational mind formed those laws. 

Another example of tuning for discoverability is the constant, α, that governs the electromagnetic force. 

“A small increase in α would have resulted in all open wood fires going out; yet harnessing fire was essential to the development of civilization, technology, and science – e.g., the forging of metals….. Going in the other direction, if α were decreased, light microscopes would have proportionality less resolving power without the size of living cells or other microscopic objects changing (when measured in atomic units).”

So a larger α means no open wood flames and a smaller α means we would not be able to examine living cells, both of which are very significant to discoverability and technological advancement.

Another example of fine-tuning discoverability is radioactive decay compared to the strength of gravity.  This allows us to study geology, archeology, and paleontology….all crucial in learning about life, the Earth, and history.

“the ability to use radioactive dating – which plays a crucial role in geology, archeology, and paleontology -- depends on the density of radioactive elements in the crust of the planet on which observers evolve. As the strength of gravity is decreased (e.g., as measured by the force between two protons a unit distance apart), the density of radioactive elements must decrease to keep the number of volcanoes per unit area from increasing, which would decrease livability.”

Some atheists, including Carroll, have claimed that extra, unnecessary particles show that the universe was not created by an intelligent agent since a designer would not include such unnecessary features.  This is merely a “Naturalism of the gaps” argument….. ‘I don’t know why a creator would do this, so there is no creator’.  One example is the muon.  Collins argues that the muon has played a very important role in our ability to learn about our universe and other particles.  He sites this article in Symmetry Magazine:

“The muon is one of 16 fundamental particles that make up everything—all matter, all forces, all energy—in the visible universe….The muon’s puzzling appearance and subsequent identification as a unique and autonomous particle perplexed scientists and revolutionized the field of particle physics. It was the precursor to the three generations of matter and opened the door for the discovery of quarks and other particles.”

“Today scientists can manipulate the muon and use it as a tool not only for particle physics research but also for cosmology, archeology and public safety. They have used muons to test special relativity and time dilation and to probe the interiors of pyramids for secret chambers. Today scientists use muons to image novel materials such as high-temperature superconductors, to study chemical reactions, to look for hidden nuclear weapons and even to determine things as delicate as the size of a proton.”

There is even talk of building a muon collider.  For an unnecessary particle, a lot has been learned because of it and this isn’t the end of what we will learn from the muon! 

Collins goes on to discuss the cosmic microwave background radiation and the dark energy coincidence problem, but that will have to be another post.  Needless to say, his paper is full of good info!!

How does the discoverability point to an intelligent creator?  If the entropy were higher, we would not know that our universe had a beginning and required a transcendent cause.  We also would not know some of the fundamental laws that govern our universe, which a rational universe provides evidence for a rational creator.  If the constant that governs the electromagnetic force, α, were higher, we wouldn’t have fire or anything that results from fire.  If α were lower, we would not be able to see living cells in a microscope.  If you want to know why that points to an intelligent mind, see Steven Meyer’s video on the cell.  Radioactive decay has allowed us to study geology, archeology, and paleontology….all crucial in learning about life, the Earth, and history.  The muon has opened the door to understand our universe at the particle level.

The more I learn, the more Romans 1 amazes me.  God truly has revealed his existence through what he has made.

Winning the Battle; Losing the War

I remember my freshman year of high school when my science teacher began teaching about the Big Bang.  Having been taught to be skeptical of scientists, I was surprised by how much the Big Bang resembled Genesis 1.  God spoke and ‘BANG’ it happened!  I also noticed how the creation order of Genesis 1 went from no life to simple life to complex life.  My transition from Young Earth Creationism (YEC) to Old Earth Creationism (OEC) was that easy. 

The church I grew up in didn’t focus on Young Earth Creationism (YEC).  They were focused on the end times and their own unique theology…very unique.  When I went to college, I realized that their very unique theology was very wrong.  This sent me into a period of severe doubt to the point of agnosticism.  Everything was on the table, including my belief in God.  Around the same time, I learned about the 1^st and 2^nd Laws of Thermodynamics in my Thermodynamics class.  This made the Big Bang and the origin of life all the more amazing to me.  What kept me from atheism was my knowledge of science…..knowing that the universe and origin of life needed a transcendent cause.  This was before I had studied any apologetic arguments for the existence of God.

It wasn’t until several years after graduation that I learned the majority view among evangelical Christians was YEC.  This wasn’t a big deal for me until I realized that many churches make this view an either/or issue for the Bible; either Genesis 1 is a literal six-day creation account or the Bible is false.  I also was surprised to discover that according to many YEC’s I am a “Compromised Christian”.  The problem is when kids go to college and see the evidence for an old universe and an old Earth, they are forced to choose between evidence or faith; reason or faith; fact or faith.  Apologetic arguments that use science, evidence, and reason to support faith are ignored because they have been taught it’s either literalism (but only in certain parts) or atheism.  Many times faith loses.  I’ve seen this play out online where the individual says if Genesis 1 cannot be taken literally, Christianity is not worth following.  Around 400 AD, Saint Augustine warned we should not hang on to views that can have more than one interpretation with such dogma that we lose our faith over it.

 “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received.  In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.”

~Saint Augustine, 400 AD, The Literal Meaning of Genesis

What I lament the most about the literal interpretation of Genesis requirement is that some of the scientific theories YEC’s fight against provide some of the best evidence for a creator.  When the Big Bang is thrown out, so is the fine-tuning argument which most atheists agree is the most compelling evidence for a creator.  When a prominent pastor and author publicly says that the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics was caused by sin he is essentially saying the beginning of time, which Stephen Hawking says “smacks of theism”, was caused by sin.  To be fair, on most YEC websites this is on the list of arguments not to use, but the damage is done when this view is publicly proclaimed by well-known figures.  The Bible says that God has revealed himself through what has been made.  It’s unfortunate that well-meaning Christians are unknowingly fighting this revelation.

The scientific theories that give support to a creator should be taught in our churches, not blindly rejected.  We are sending our kids into the world unarmed and unprepared to defend the faith they are supposed to give their lives to.  When they have questions, they are frequently told to just have faith.  The world sees this and is lead to believe that Christianity is not intellectually viable. 

 

 

Tomorrow night there will be a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on creationism vs evolution.  The real topic will be YEC vs atheism.  What will not be seen is evidence for the Christian faith that can be used to engage an unbelieving world or answer the questions of those struggling with their faith.  No matter who wins the debate tomorrow night between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, we are losing the war for the minds of our young people.

 “Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”

~Saint Augustine, 400 AD, The Literal Meaning of Genesis

 

The Multi-Verse: Part III – The Height of Irrationality

The idea of the multi-verse is often used to hand-wave away difficulties with a naturalistic explanation for our universe.  Unfortunately, all the multi-verse does is move the goal posts back a level; the questions in this universe do not go away by adding an infinite number of universes.  There are many scientific and philosophical implications or unanswered questions with the idea of the multi-verse without a designer, so here’s a short list: 

 

 

The laws of physics are independent of the universe

The laws of physics are needed to allow a universe to form prior to the universe forming, if not temporally then ontologically.  As Alex Vilenkin said in this interview,

 

“The same laws that describe the evolution of the universe also describe the appearance of the universe; its coming into being.  This seems to suggest that the laws were there prior to the universe itself…..The laws of physics have some platonic existence which is independent of the universe.” – Alex Vilenkin

A platonic existence is the idea that abstract objects, like numbers, shapes, truth statements, etc exist in an independent reality as opposed to being ideas that do not really exist.  Vilenkin is saying the laws of physics exist in an independent reality.  Appealing to a multi-verse does not explain away the laws of physics, since it too needs laws of physics to exist.  The next question is, are the laws of physics brute fact (exist out of necessity), chance, or is there a mind behind the math?  I’ll deal with chance next.  If the laws of physics are brute fact, then it is impossible to have a universe with different laws of physics.  I don’t know of any scientist that holds this view, but even if true, does not explain how the constants within those laws are fine-tuned for a life-permitting universe.  The fine-tuning of the universe for life still cries out for an explanation. 

 

Using the multi-verse to escape a designer is a logical fallacy

The reason the multi-verse has gainedpopularity in scientific circles is due to the fine-tuning problem, which many (not all) atheists acknowledge as the most compelling evidence for a designer, although not compelling enough.  In order to avoid a designer or appealing to the Anthropic Principle (it has to be that way or we wouldn’t exist aka “just have faith”), atheists are now appealing to the idea of an infinite number of universes to increase the probability/chance that a universe tuned to 10^-120 is closer to 1.  There are a couple of issues with this:

 

1).  In order to have an infinite number of universes with different physical constants and early universe conditions, a constant scrambler or some other mechanism must exist to set these different constants prior to these universes forming.  Where does the randomness come from?  Is this cosmic slot machine also tuned to randomly spit out universes with different constants?

2).  This commits the Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy which is “the fallacy of concluding, on the basis of an unlikely outcome of a random process, that the process is likely to have occurred many times before.”  In other words, simply saying that ‘the odds are extremely low that a universe such as ours would form; therefore, there must be an infinite number of universes’ is a logical fallacy.

 

Occam’s Razor

Occam’s Razor is a principle that states that when there are competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.  This is not a principle that refutes logic or science, nor does it prove/disprove anything.  What it does implicate is that one should not posit an infinite number of universes just to explain one universe when the simple explanation of a mind fits the data for the fine-tuning and other discoveries that have been made.

 

The multi-verse also had a beginning

In this video, Alan Guth describes his theory of eternal inflation, which is the leading theory for what happened just prior to the Big Bang (the Big Bang is the result of inflation).  It is not a complete theory, as the he acknowledges, but has made some predictions that have been confirmed.  One of the predictions of this theory is that once inflation starts, the universe expands forever into the future and can repeat by creating more universes.  The caveat to the theory of eternal inflation is that the “eternal” part only goes one way; the future.  Something had to start the first inflating universe.

 

“….we’ve been able to “prove” mathematically that it’s in fact not possible to extrapolate arbitrarily far into the past.  Somewhere if you extrapolate backwards into the past [], somewhere [was] the beginning of inflation.” – Alan Guth

Eternal Inflation is only one of several theories for the origin of the universe and is compatible with some of them like string theory; however, the BGV theorem says if a universe has an average state of expansion, it had a beginning.  Alan Guth is the G in BGV.  This also applies to the multi-verse.  If the multi-verse is expanding, it too had a beginning.  Is it possible the multi-verse is not expanding?  It’s difficult to imagine a multi-verse full of expanding universes that is not also expanding, but if the multi-verse is not expanding it must be infinitely large which leads toproblems.

 

Another reason to believe the multi-verse had a beginning is the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics.  As Vilenkin explained, the laws of physics had to exist prior to the universe to allow the universe to form at all.  If our universe was formed out of the multi-verse and the laws of physics were already in place, there is no valid reason to believe the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics does not also apply to the multi-verse.  This also suggests a beginning since the multi-verse should have hit thermal equilibrium an infinite time ago.

 

If the multi-verse does exist, it also had a beginning and requires a cause.

 

Our universe would not be an isolated system

Many of the equations used in the laws of physics are based on the assumption that the universe is an isolated system and have been repeatedly confirmed.  If the multi-verse exists and has interacted with our universe in any way, our universe would not be an isolated system.  This would call into question many things we have observed and think we know about our universe.  Should the multi-verse be discovered our laws of physics may not need adjusting, but I think observational confirmation of our equations lends credence to the idea that our universe has not been impacted by an outside universe. 

 

Multi-verse of the gaps

I don’t know if there are an infinite number of universes or not.  No one does; there isn’t any evidence for or against it.  The issue I have with the multi-verse is that it is being used to hand-wave away evidence for a designer.  It provides an intellectual escape by allowing people to ignore the problems with naturalistic explanations and then claim there is no evidence for a designer.  It’s the “multi-verse of the gaps” argument.  With an infinite number of universes, anything and everything can be explained away.  A theory that can explain anything explains nothing.

 

Why is there something, rather than nothing?

The multi-verse does not answer one of the fundamental questions, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” 

 

The multi-verse can substitute for religion

The multi-verse can be used as a religion substitute.  One of the benefits to having an infinite number of universes is the comfort of knowing that you will live again in another universe.  Tommaso Dorigo laments this new trend in this article where he says,

 

“Indeed, long ago man invented religion as a way to explain what he could not figure out by logical methods, as well as to accept his own mortality: religion made acceptable the concept of death, as well as give an explanation to other natural phenomena. And man is now inventing the multiverse in what appears to me a new, albeit well disguised, attempt in the same direction. One as reassuring and sweet as the idea of an almighty entity….We might be immortal after all….if we accept that the universe is a multiverse unlimited in time, with bubbles continuously regenerated, we must conclude that we are bound to live again not one, but an infinite number of times.”

 

 

Your evil twin is wreaking havoc somewhere

One of the fun implications of an infinite number of universes is the reality that every individual exists in oneor more other universes.  There are an infinite number of me! 

 

“some calculations suggest that a reality with infinite space and infinite universes would necessarily have to repeat itself sometimes, leading to the conclusion that copies of Earth and everyone on it exist somewhere else out there.” – Daniel Mortlock

 

Could one of these copies be my evil twin?  Maybe in another universe I’m an anti-theist, or apologist for atheism…..or a super hero or super villain! 

 

 

The multi-verse is best explained by God

A transcendent mind is still the best explanation for our laws of physics, the fine-tuning of those laws, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, the origin of the multi-verse, and why there is something rather than nothing.  Adding an infinite number of universes does nothing to explain these and is an intellectual leap without warrant. 

 

 

The idea of multiple universes does not pose a threat to Christianity.  God is free to do as he pleases.  The multi-verse may or may not exist.  We don’t know one way or the other, but using an infinite number of universes as an escape for a designer is not a rational counter-argument to the arguments for theism. 

 

“To postulate a trillion trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality.” – Richard Swinburne, Is There a God?